


Aglaophotis

by SinclairMaxwell



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Thaumaturgy - C.L. McReynolds
Genre: F/M, M/M, Parenthood, Raising Harry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-18 20:59:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3583752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinclairMaxwell/pseuds/SinclairMaxwell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the Thaumaturgy series by C.L. McReynolds; The gates of the Vatran Plane have been reopened and the Mother goddess has been appeased. But what now? What's next for Sascha and Paimon? The deaths of family and friends weigh heavily on their minds as the two leave the Earth Plane behind to see their quests completed. The Mother, however, has a surprise in store for them when they arrive. A small boy with brilliant emerald eyes, curled in the arms of a shadow. Just who is little Harry and where did he come from? One thing, they knew for certain. The Mother, in return for the children Paimon had lost in service to her, had gifted the demon with another. Parental!Sascha, Many Feels, raising Harry Potter, no Hogwarts. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aglaophotis

A/N: So this is a crossover between Harry Potter and the book Thaumaturgy by C.L. McReynolds. It's a pretty obscure book but pretty fantastic and I thought it deserved it's very own crossover. :) Please go check out the original to support the author! This story takes place right after the events of the last chapter and disregards the epilogue entirely. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: This is fanfiction. All rights are reserved by the authors.

 

Introduction... Twice Wronged, Now Amended

 

          The Umbra was thick and vast as any sea could dream of being. Yet, with the Vatran Plane's reopening, Paimon and I seemed to be encountering more and more of our Shadowborne kin as they rushed back to the homeland, back to families and homes that they had been cut off from these past weeks. It was a bittersweet sight. We had freed the world of the Wasting disease by appeasing our Mother goddess and she had opened Vatra back to our people but... So much had been lost along the way.

_'A wet struggle for breath through the body's own fluids and a lot, animal whine.'_

_'The sight of a small, curled and broken body lying still on the floor of a cold and empty warehouse. Discarded and dumped as if she'd been nothing but refuse. Garbage, unloved and uncared for. But that was wrong. Paimon had loved her. Her mother had cared.'_

          An overexcited Egregore sped past us, the shadows pulling and dancing around him as he rushed over to a little girl who's outline shifted and moved just as surely as her father's did. He scooped her up into his arms, spinning around and laughign with joy. Many parents had been cut off from their children when the Mother had slammed the gates closed, keeping any from leaving Vatra and any from entering. My lavender eyes caught the stricken expression in Paimon's pale face. Mother...it had been only two short days since she had to pick her beloved daughter's body up off of the ground.

          It wasn't fair. Paimon had already lost so much! There was so much pain in her cherry colored eyes that it was unimaginable how the demoness could contain it all. She had already watched many of her children burn to death in their beds after the Great Planar Wars. Now, her sweet Yaiyai...murdered by one of the Council that our people trusted to protect them. My heart hurt for her, tightening and twisting inside the confines of my chest. Was there anything in all of the Nine Planes that could ease her suffering? In an uncharacteristic show of camaraderie, I slipped my hand into her slackened, loose one and tugged her away from the scene. She didn't need to see that. Not when her loss was still so fresh. Her eyes flicked back to my own and my efforts were rewarded with a lilliputian, halfhearted smile, more of a quirking of the lips than a true grin. It was a far cry from her usual, nearly unnatural grin. I watched Paimon steel herself against her pain, nodding to herself. Her hand gave my own a small squeeze and for a moment, just a moment, all I could do was admire her quiet, unshakable strength. This was the person who wanted me to stand by her side for the rest of her life. I was just some green, disgraced necromancer but she wanted me in her life anyways. I stood in awe in the face of it.

"Come, Sascha. Let's get you to the Mother. She doesn't like to be kept waiting."

I nearly snorted. No, I imagine any goddess wouldn't. But the memory of the horror the Mother had wrought in her fury was still too near. I gave her a stygian nod and we slid through the shadows of the Umbra towards the gates of our people's homeland.

                                                                                                                        ... ... ...

          We didn't have the chance to see much of Vatra, to my great regret. The realm of the Shadowborne was vast and a necromancers first pilgrimage to the homeland was our greatest milestone in life. Our mission, however, was too important for sightseeing and Paimon was right. It did no good to keep a jilted goddess waiting. So the moment we were within Vatra's gates, Paimon ducked us into the Umbra once more. The shadows were darker here, more _alive_ somehow but I didn't have time to observe much because as soon as we'd entered the darkness, we were exiting again, this time into the heart of the Mutterkimmer, the temple of our mother goddess herself.

          The moment we stepped forth, my eyes were...dazzled. The Umbra had released us into a vast stone chamber the likes of which I had never seen. Walls and floor of purest black obsidian shimmered almost like fluid in the low fairy lights that flickered in midair around the hall. Their dim glow reflected millions of tiny pinpoints like stars, minerals housed within the stone giving the chamber the appearance of a stolen section of the night sky. It was beautiful, so lovely that I felt my very breath stolen away. The obsidian stone only seemed to be accented by the white drapes that formed the backdrop for an ornate marble throne. Sheer, pearlescent curtains hung about the seat and hung unmoving and silent...save for one. The curtain hung over an arch that sat at the throne's back and billowed softly in an unfelt wind. The strange sight sent a thrill of fear down my spine and, contrary to my will, a shiver escaped my careful control. A veil...but veiling what? 

"Welcome, my little necromancer, to the Mutterkimmer. The seat of our Mother on the physical Planes." Paimon whispered as if she too stood in awe of this new magnificence. She must have been to this mystical place one hundred times over the course of her long centuries of life. Did the wonder ever cease?

          It wasn't simply the cavernous, shimmering hall that caught one up in it's beauty. It was the low hum of _power_ flowing constantly through the room like a flood. Spiraling and curling in near imperceptible currents and eddies, it was a magic so strong, so full of possibility that it wasn't hard to imagine that it had given birth to my own necromancy. To the rest of my kith and kin in our entirety. Every necromancer alive had our power breathed into us by our creatrix at conception. The Mother had created all of her Shadowborne children, from the eerie-eyed Scadeugengan to the gangling, spiderlike Ettercap. We were all of her children, every one. So focused was I on my internal musings that I nearly missed the soft, tiny movement from behind the throne. Almost. The sharp-eyed UnderEarth emissary at my side noticed it too if the creasing of her pale brow was any indication. I didn't have the chance to give voice to my curiosity. The moment my mouth opened to speak, the power which had been lazily flowing about our knees _surged_.

          Instead of a stream moving around us, we were without warning being buffeted by a typhoon of shadow. The cool magic raced about Paimon and I just as surely as my pulse now sped unchecked within my chest. Could necromancers die of heart failure? Maybe I would find out this evening. It became hard to draw breath so quick was the whirlwind around us. Perhaps I would suffocate first. That wasn't so bad. It was less uncomfortable than being crushed to death. Then again, as a necromancer, death was an impermanent, transient state. It didn't make resurrection any less uncomfortable though. That time with the wood chipper? I _still_ didn't want to talk about it. As quickly as it began, the tides pulled back and left in their place the shadowy, featureless figure of a woman, almost amorphous in the constantly shifting form she had take. The figure resembling more smoke than anything solid. Wraith-like and fluid.

 _The Mother_.

There was no doubt in my mind that this figure was her embodiment within her temple here in Vatra. She nodded, faceless in her shadow-made body but, somehow, I could just tell that she was pleased. The magic left in the hall spiraled and twisted merrily with its creatrix's own feelings.

“ _Sascha_...I've been waiting a very long time for you.” Her voice came out as a whisper on the wind or like music coming through an unstable radio station.

“One-hundred and fifty-eight years, by my estimation, my lady.” Eliann's careless snark had apparently worn off on me. Fortunately, the goddess did not take offense. Rather, she appeared only amused.

          Her gaze turned to the silent demoness at my side and suddenly, the mirth died only to be replaced with a vast sorrow as deep as the Great Sea on the Zarna Plane. It was strange, surreal almost, to feel another's emotions in the air. It was...like a taste or a smell on the back of the tongue. Heady and spicy or cool like peppermint.

“Paimon...my dearest one, I have twice wronged you now. Twice now have you lost your own children in the service of mine. Forgive me, beloved.” She whispered, head bowing and shoulders slumping with a heavy regret. Paimon shook her head and made to refute the Mother's claimed but the creatrix held up a hand to stop her, “No, no, peace. I have wronged you. Those losses lie on my shoulders and for that, I will make amends. I've brought you a gift. I suppose I should say this gift pertains to you both now that you've seemed to have accepted her courtship, Sascha.”

A moment of dim-witted confusion crossed my tired mind before I realized with a start that Paimon's hand was still gently clasped in my own. A heady flush crept up my neck but I didn't risk offending my potentially emotionally fragile companion by letting go. That's what I told myself at least.

“A gift, my lady?”

The Mother gave her nod of assent and gesturing towards the throne, an errant shadow stretched out from the roiling mass to venture into the space beyond. What it returned with was something neither of us could have expected. A small child lay curled in the shadow's snake-like coils, staring about him, completely unconcerned, with the biggest set of green eyes I had ever seen. An unnatural, brilliant emerald, piercing in its intensity. The boy was a pale child, giving even my own pallid skin tone a run for its money, and _tiny_. So tiny. The child could only be a scant few years old at most. He didn't seem bothered by the strange happenings around him in the slightest. A nest of pitch colored hair, soft as a raven's down, sat a top his small head. Curled about his lilliputian form was a faded green blanket with an embroidered HP on a chewed corner. The room filled with a light-hearted, yet somehow sad affection.

“Sascha, Paimon. This is Harry. If you will have him, I have chosen him as your new child.”

 

Read and Review, mein liebens!

 


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